13 ms·
Covid-19 Mortality Risk Correlates Inversely with Vitamin D3 Status
- _Microft 5y agoFigure 2 in their paper [0] shows the mechanism via which (as they say) vitamin D3 is supposed to improve outcomes of a Covid19 infection. It seems to counteract the negative effects on ACE2 levels that a Covid19 infection has which seem to be responsible for bad outcomes. [0] Open Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/10/3596/htm https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/10/3596/htm
- GaryTang 5y ago“Mortality Rate Close to Zero Could Theoretically Be Achieved at 50 ng/mL 25(OH)D3” Or in other words, the vaccine could theoretically not be needed if vitamin d3 levels are adequate.
- sarks_nz 5y agoThis statement assumes the only bad outcome from COVID is death.
- User23 5y agoThis statement assumes that death is the only bad outcome from COVID that sufficient Vitamin D3 levels prevent. Death is useful as a metric because, unlike other health outcomes, particularly quality of life ones, there's no element of subjectivity.
- simion314 5y agoYou could measure days of hospitalization too, I would suggest both vaccine and Vitamin supplements if there are no side-effects.
- rossdavidh 5y agoAnother useful aspect of death as a metric, is that it is the most widely reported (as compared to, say, maximum fever, amount of ventilation required, days in hospital, lasting anosmia, etc. etc.)
- wrycoder 5y agoIt appears that with COVID, the proximate cause of death is often mis-coded, for financial reasons.
- rob_c 5y agoNo. The statement is making a statement on deaths. You are implying this.
- throwawaysea 5y agoFor the overwhelming majority of people that is the only bad outcome. Severe conditions like ARDS are rare, but also correlate with Vitamin D deficiency even outside of the pandemic (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25903964/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25903964/). As for other symptoms that are being lumped together under the label “long COVID”, their incidence seems low, the severity is usually low, and nearly all conditions disappear over time. Some have suggested that perhaps those lingering effects are no different than a typical cold or flu, except this time we are all focused on this issue and noticing these things. Personally I am not convinced that the young and heathy need to treat COVID specially. This is a pandemic of the old and unhealthy more than anything.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> Severe conditions like ARDS are rare Polio was lethal in less than 1% of cases, and caused severe disability in a small fraction, too. Yet people didn't go into hysterics when asked to make a relatively larger sacrifice (the polio vaccine was far less safe than modern ones) for their country.
- uselesscynicism 5y agoI wish the people agreeing with this statement wouldn't choose to flag the grandparent so I could make up my own mind about what it said.. but anything that goes against the narrative must be censored by you people, I guess. Who are "you people", you ask? BlueAnon mainstream conspiracy theory believing paranoids, the kind that put masks on their children and then put them into their cars, even though riding in a car is more dangerous to a child than COVID
- phonypc 5y agoNah it's just a comically absurd proposition, even if you take the implication that low D3 is causing COVID mortality at face value. Obligatory relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/605/ https://xkcd.com/605/
- scotty79 5y agoOr you could get a vaccine, supplement vitamin D3 and in case you'll get a positive test result, take fluvoxamine and budesonide inhaler. Because why take chances with the virus that causes cognitive deficit proportional to the severity of other symptoms.
- rob_c 5y agoGiven the vaccine doesn't stop symptoms or catching it is there a point to what you're saying. Taking vitamin d probably reduces symptoms across the board reducing the need for additional palliative care
- rob_c 5y agoSo I'm assuming people who down vote assume preventing deaths is achieved through some means that doesn't impact the rest of the course of a disease... I wish we lived in such a simple universe
- scotty79 5y agoI think people take offence in you not noticing that vaccines also reduce symptoms and even stop them in some cases. And that this fact has been better proven than any claims of vitamin D effect on covid. Literally billions of people already took vaccines for covid, some, almost a yer ago. Time to update your mental model.
- visarga 5y ago> Literally billions of people already took vaccines for covid It's got to be billions of people + 5..10 years wait (and all the death caused in the meantime) to satisfy them.
- scotty79 5y agoIf you are afraid of covid vaccines long term effects why are you not afraid that covid infection itself will cause some health issues in 5..10 years, for example lung cancers or brain tumors? We know that some cancers are caused by viruses and we know sars-cov-2 can linger in the body.
- amelius 5y agohttps://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2775003 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2775003
- jleyank 5y agoD3 might be a proxy for age, as I thought older folks were to take D and Calcium to reduce the chance of osteoporosis. It might also be a proxy for overall health, as those short of D3 are probably not eating "well-balanced diets, ..." that marketeers are fond of talking about. It's also possible that it has a direct effect on the result, which would (as mentioned already) make it an excellent complement of vaccination. One reduces the chance of the ultimate problem, one reduces the chance of duration/problems. And it's cheap.
- ng12 5y agoBut I would expect older people taking D3 for (pre)osteoporosis would generally be high risk for COVID. I know this thread is overflowing with anecdotal information but two family members in their sixties had completely asymptotic covid infections. Neither was generally healthy (obesity in one, asthma in the other) but both supplemented with Vitamin D3.
- truly 5y agoFrom the second paragraph in the abstract, it seems that they adjust for age: "Mortality rates from clinical studies were corrected for age, sex, and diabetes."
- elliekelly 5y agoVitamin D also correlated heavily with race which it doesn’t seem they adjust for?
- throwawaysea 5y agoHasn’t this been known for over a year and a half now? This isn’t the first study on Vitamin D. Some past discussions on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24912172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24912172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23119949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23119949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23023703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23023703 Another comorbidity is obesity, which can also cause Vitamin D deficiency. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26924786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26924786 An interesting implication of all this is that the authoritarian measures used to manage the pandemic are effectively a subsidy. Those who are young or healthy or have a nutritionally balanced diet are taking on pains (lockdowns, mandates) to create a lower risk situation for everyone else. Personally I feel it is better for governments to provide education and strong guidance, but to ultimately favor individual choice and stay away from top down measures. With COVID, those who are young have incredibly low IFR to begin with, and they could have gone about their lives and built up antibodies naturally, which would then make it safer for everyone else anyways.
- landryraccoon 5y ago> and they could have gone about their lives and built up antibodies naturally, which would then make it safer for everyone else anyways. “Built up antibodies naturally” is a coy way of saying kill the maximum number of people possible before reaching herd immunity. Given the rapid pace of vaccine development, strict measures to slow the spread of the virus seemed reasonable. Some countries, like New Zealand and Taiwan, will largely escape the pandemic unscathed.
- sjwalter 5y ago> “Built up antibodies naturally” is a coy way of saying kill the maximum number of people possible before reaching herd immunity. This is absurd in the extreme. The proposition was that those that are the least impacted by covid--specifically, those like me who are healthy, young, getting adequate sunlight--should not have to bear the responsibility for those who are vulnerable. Covid risk for people like me, and us healthy folk are a great large chunk of the population, is less than a typical flu. Since we don't have as extreme policy responses to the flu, do you characterize that as well as "kill the maximum number of people possible"? And saying that New Zealand came through unscathed I guess just shows how differently we think. The society has come to accept being forced into isolation, accept quarantines and curfews like their unruly teenagers, accept all manner of tyranny--to you, they're unscathed because they have fewer covid-related deaths. To me, covid-related deaths--which are dwarfed still in the USA by heart disease and cancer and other ailments, don't even rise to the level of general concern. Then again, I live in Montana. Everyone doesn't care. Only on the internet and talking to Canadian or coastal friends does it come up. Around here, you say covid, and a lot of folks probably think it's a migratory bird--then again, hunting season just opened up. And with all us ignoring this crazy pandemic, you know what? The world's not ending. No vaccine mandates. No mask mandates. Everyone's "unscathed".
- Alex3917 5y agoAs a reminder, you can use the D Minder Pro app to estimate your daily vitamin D intake from sun exposure. It was free during the first year of the pandemic, right now it costs $1.99.
- DelightOne 5y agoThe Apple Watch (or any other smart watch) should have a built-in sun measuring sensor, noting when people have not enough sun exposure to produce the necessary amount of Vitamin D to be healthy. Once AR is there, they could make a game out of it, showing progress bars at the peripery of the eyes. This could make reaching the targets much easier for a lot more people.
- Auracle 5y agoThat sounds like a good way to get sued over someone’s melanoma.
- bt1a 5y agoEasily preventable with a 100 page ToS to agree to before allowing usage!
- nradov 5y agoWristwatches are often covered by sleeves.
- DelightOne 5y agoHow much sun does that block? Workarounds may be feasible, depending on the mechanism.
- Vrondi 5y agoThe thickness and color of the cloth would affect how strong the SPF is for any given shirt.
- 5y ago
- treeman79 5y agoStarted taking high levels of d3 a few months before covid, as I had very low levels. (Autoimmune) A year later and I got covid. A few scary nights. I recovered but had a sharp increase in micro-clotting. Something that was an issue before Covid. I had to double blood thinners to keep symptoms under control. Took six months before I could lower dosage again. Covid aside I’m much healthier since upping d3. I had been bed ridden with uncontrollable migraines the year prior.
- glofish 5y agoThere is a long history of Vitamin D deficiency being linked to cancer, heart disease, respiratory infection, stroke, diabetes, and death. For a detailed discussion of the subject see the blog post: Vitamin D - The evidence https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-3-the-evidence?postId=5f4e8bf673d853002ded6cd3 https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-3-the-evidence... > "We now have results for over 1500 RCTs on Vitamin D supplementation. Some of the largest and most significant trials are listed and summarized at the end of this article. When tested on its ability to prevent disease, Vitamin D has failed to live up to expectations." Thousands of peer reviewed research papers have been published that Vitamin D does truly work for cancer and stroke etc and all the above. But then, as the blog points out, none of the claims held once bigger and properly designed RCTs were performed. The only disease provably cured by Vitamin D supplementation was ... Vitamin D deficiency. Hence I am quite skeptical here as well. The eagerness to embrace Vitamin D as a silver bullet is no different than that of Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine. It is not that simple to cure COVID - people dearly wish it were hence they want to believe.
- patrickwalton 5y agoThe studies mentioned are for supplementation. I'd be interested to see studies on vitamin D benefits through sunlight exposure instead. It may be that these studies are proving not that increasing vitamin D levels can prevent disease, but that supplementation is ineffective.
- pgeorgi 5y agoThe title is quite something. The part that made it here seems reasonable enough, as it can be understood as "higher D3 levels help in not dying as much as with lower D3 levels" which is possible. The other half is "a Mortality Rate Close to Zero Could Theoretically Be Achieved at 50 ng/mL 25(OH)D3" which the abstract argues for because "Regression suggested a theoretical point of zero mortality at approximately 50 ng/mL D3." Someone sent in the clowns. (after that abstract I'm not sure I want to check out the details)
- glofish 5y agoI agree, that they even have a dosage at which they predict zero deaths is nothing short of ludicrous. It gives away that they authors are unqualified.
- IAmGraydon 5y agoCorrelation I get. How are they making the jump to causation?
- mg 5y agoI have been collecting studies related to treatment and prevention of the common cold for a while now. Every time I have a cold, I spend some time growing the list. So far, Vitamin D3 is one of the more promising treatments in the list. Here are two interesting RCTs regarding Vitamin D and respiratory tract infections: Preventive Effects of Vitamin D on Seasonal Influenza: https://journals.lww.com/pidj/fulltext/2018/08000/preventive_effects_of_vitamin_d_on_seasonal.5.aspx https://journals.lww.com/pidj/fulltext/2018/08000/preventive... Vitamin D Supplementation for the Prevention of Acute Respiratory Tract Infection: https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/202/5/809/1746565 https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/202/5/809/1746565
- nradov 5y agoThere have been a bunch of other studies on vitamin D and COVID-19. Before jumping to conclusions and commenting here I recommend reviewing the existing literature. https://vitamin-d-covid.shotwell.ca/ https://vitamin-d-covid.shotwell.ca/
- lvs 5y agoThis is another long discarded bit of snake oil. If there were genuine home remedies for Covid that you could buy at the grocery store, we'd have told you about it. It turns out there are only two: vaccines and masks. It's healthy to have the recommended amount of Vitamin D, but not at the expense of a vaccine and a mask. You decide: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/instance/8541492/bin/nutrients-13-03596-g005.jpg https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/instance/8541492/b...
- c-c-c-c-c 5y agoPut a mask on and breathe on a pair of glasses. Then please explain how the water molecules can pass through while other aerosols cannot.
- hanniabu 5y agoWater particles aren't getting through. Please look up how condensation works, it's about a difference in temperatures.
- aeternum 5y agoWater particles absolutely are getting through. Yes the glasses are colder and breathe is warmer but it is still the water vapor from the hot moist breath that is the primary source of the water condensate. While water particles do pass easily, viruses may not as respiratory aerosols are orders of magnitude larger about 1.6-5um vs. water at 0.27nm
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- wrycoder 5y agoPlease look up the size of individual H2O molecules (which are what you exhale, not water drops).
- Vrondi 5y agoIt isn't the water molecules passing through the mask from your mouth. Your body is warmer than the air around you most of the year (unless you live in the tropics). It is mostly the heat of your breath passing through the mask, then hitting the cooler surface of the glasses, and making the moisture in the air that is already outside your mask condense on the glasses.
- jliptzin 5y agoFor what it’s worth, I had a physical in my mid-20s where my doctor saw my vitamin D levels were low, so he told me to supplement with vitamin D. I take 10,000 IU with vitamin K about 5x/week. I am 35 now and I happened to check my levels around Jan 2020, to make sure I wasn’t overdoing it. I was at 53 ng/mL, which was perfect. The pandemic came around, and while a lot of people around me got sick, I never did, but I had also been good about mask adherence. So I was a little surprised in August 2020 when my doctor gave me a COVID antibody test (blood draw), just to see, had come back positive, considering I had felt completely fine through that whole period. Then again a few months later, when my SO came down with covid, needless to say we had extremely close contact during the infectious period, and I was still completely fine. I’m not trying to be a vitamin D evangelist or anything, of course I could just be one of the lucky ones when it comes to covid, but I feel like it’s a cheap and easy thing to try if you aren’t currently supplementing. And of course, I am vaccinated as well now.
- tamcap 5y agoRE: your last sentence. High dose supplementation of vitamin D should be done after consulting with your doctor (like you did). As a fat soluble vitamin, our bodies sometimes struggle to dispose of the excess. Therefore a person with "normal" vitamin D levels who begins supplementing at high levels is potentially risking some side effects. It's always good to be monitored in situations like those. It seems you are doing exactly that, which is great.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago> I take 10,000 IU with vitamin K about 5x/week. I am 35 now and I happened to check my levels around Jan 2020, to make sure I wasn’t overdoing it. I was at 53 ng/mL, which was perfect. As a counter example, I took 5,000 IU per day and almost ended up over the 100ng/dL upper limit. I had to reduce my supplementation to avoid overdose. Vitamin D supplementation is very person-dependent, so I recommend anyone supplementing with higher dose supplements (5000IU and up) check their blood levels every few years.
- latchkey 5y ago1. Does your SO take VitD as well? 2. Interesting that you didn't give it to them when you had covid.
- mzimbres 5y agoHuman beings have been living in europe for over 100,000 years. White skin doesn't seem to be older than a 10,000 years (see the skin analysis of the first briton). I don't think it would have taken so much time to evolve white skin had it really had the importance that is being attributed to it nowadays. I am very skeptical about its importance on preventing not only covid but also many other deseases.
- kadoban 5y agoAnything that kills you mostly only after prime child-birthing years does not matter to evolution, and human behavior and diet has changed just a bit over the last 10000 years.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Anything that kills you mostly only after prime child-birthing years does not matter to evolution That's...very much not true. Any disease that doesn't effect the chances of children closely related to the exposed person being born and surviving to adulthood does not matter much to evolution, but killing the exposed person before or during prime childbearing years isn't the only way to effect that.
- visarga 5y agoLiving grandparents are also increasing the survival chances of their grandchildren.
- sMarsIntruder 5y agoFinally, finally and finally!
- testplzignore 5y agoIt's not a good idea to have so many nested try blocks.
- jackfoxy 5y agoAlternative sources for covid information have been beating the vitamin D and dietary zinc drum since almost the beginning of the pandemic. This could have saved so many lives. Yet the authoritarian medical establishment (governments and approved NGOs) doubled down on wait for vaccine providing no other prevention recommendations than masks and lockdowns and actively suppressed information on treatments.
- threefour 5y agoAlso see: https://www.outsideonline.com/health/wellness/sunscreen-sun-exposure-skin-cancer-science/ https://www.outsideonline.com/health/wellness/sunscreen-sun-... "...what made the people with high vitamin D levels so healthy was not the vitamin itself. That was just a marker. Their vitamin D levels were high because they were getting plenty of exposure to the thing that was really responsible for their good health—that big orange ball shining down from above."
- PicassoCTs 5y agoCOVID19 sort of blew the lid on several "health" pandemics that were underway by highlighting them. Vitamin D deficiency is one of them. The hidden diabetes surge in malnutritioned asian and western countries also comes to mind. Or the horrendous damage done to the lungs by the smog in the chinese mainland.
- pepoluan 5y agoWhen the "bradykinin storm" hypothesis [1] was postulated, I already guessed that D3 would be a potent suppressor of Covid-19 mortality & likely prevention of the "Long Covid" syndrome. Glad to see my guess is validated.